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The Grand List of Chrono Stars Clichés
There are peculiar trends that seem to haunt Chrono Stars. These are the ones that have been given names and successfully classified. Please note while this list is spoiler-free, many internal links are not, and they should consequently not be clicked on by new players. #'Schedule Hell Rule:' If it seems like everyone will be able to make it to a session, something will come up at the last minute or during the session. #'"Do You Know My Dad?" (Endur Sigvarkk's Rule):' You'll run into relatives, past selves, friends, etc, of previously-met NPCs so often that you'll suspect everyone is related in some way. #'"There's Always a Lighthouse, a Man, a City":' Events in separate dreams of Arplakoon -- even when they logically shouldn't or have no reason to -- will call back to one another in some way, or will otherwise repeat but in a new context. If one group attempts to seduce the lion, so will another. #'"Everyone is Dokani in Purgatory" (The Mioura Rule):' Everything goes back to Mioura in some way. #'Fanred's Revelation:' The Mioura Rule is truest when you least expect it. #'Alvarus' Initiative ("RNG Loves Tragedy" Rule):' The dice want a good story, not what's logical. If it'd be dramatic for your character to roll a 1 and land in a camp of thirty doeron slavers, it'll happen. #'"Doji Still Can't Fly":' Skill/ability checks that logically should succeed probably won't. This results in hilarity such as a several hundred pound dragon being unable to break down a door, but a small shoulder-sized dragon doing it without a problem. #'"I Believe In Zra":' If you need to step away from the game and the DM (or another player) has to roll for your character while you're gone, your character will somehow get more natural 20s than they ever do while you play them. #'"Two Heads Are... Sometimes Better Than One?":' If one person tries to make a Spot, Listen, or Search check, so will everyone else, just to be safe. This only makes the despair at no one finding anything useful all the more tangible. #'"I'm Always A Slut For Dumping Wisdom":' WHEN WILL WE LEARN WISDOM IS NOT A GOOD DUMP STAT. #'Praise Renddar and All Your Rolls Will Be 20s:' Divine intervention will always be a natural 20 if you worship certain gods. #'Hail Cazimo and You Will Hate The Game:' Apparently, all gods have their quirks. If you worship Cazimo, expect to get 20s for joke rolls and 1s for rolls you really needed... back-to-back. Most egregious is when someone "takes" the 20 you needed right after you flub a critical roll. #'Galanias' Weapon Never Misses Its Mark:' But if you're more quiet about your god worship, only calling on them in the most dire moments of need, you will have a bounty of natural 20s. #'Varthenral's Corollary (Cameo's Complaint): '''Enjoying the company of an NPC, especially a plot-relevant one, guarantees that they'll be in a situation in the near future that is life-threatening, heart-breaking, or both. #'"Marc! Marc! Marc! Marc!":' The more you try to fight your character -- or something they did -- being a meme, the more stubbornly persistent the meme will become. Accept your fate. #'Azwell's Rule:' If your character dies, everyone is going to make fun of you for it until the game ends, and then for years after. Even ''you will probably make fun of yourself for it. #'Aydin's Rule:' Although deaths are uncommon from fights solely against NPCs, any fight that has PCs on opposing sides will result in at least someone dying. This is despite how... #'"Enjoy Whooping Cough, Infants": '''You can get shot in the heart and not die as long as you don't fail a Fortitude save below 0 hit points. The NPCs are not consistently afforded such a luxury and are victims of reality when suitably dramatic. #'Throntuk's Inevitable Lawsuit:' Forgetting about NPCs, either friendly or hostile, in the heat of a battle will result in somebody dying or getting horribly injured. Don't leave your NPC ally to fend off a horde of skeletons on their own. #'"He Really Should Have Invested In Insurance": If the DM needs them alive later, antagonists/polarizing characters shouldn't appear in-person without plot armor. #"Be Kind To My Lost Children":' Even if you hate that NPC, they probably have some sort of reason for acting the way they do. #'"Always Chaotic Evil" Rule:' ...Except for ''very particular characters who are just complete scumbags with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Trust me. You'll know them when you see them. #'Only the Worthy May Make a Pass:' Any "canonized" or "official" romantic relationship that wasn't already in the plot (i.e. not Ferries Parang and Ralaux Rombaferre or Whist Jueneros and Rail Nightclaw) will adhere to the following oddly specific rules: It will be between a PC and a NPC. The PC will be male. The NPC will be female. The PC and NPC will be of different races. The PC will be older than the NPC. The NPC will have a family member that is her motivation in some way, and said family member is likely dead. Related to the above: the NPC has at least one significant dead person in her backstory. The NPC will also have an extenuating circumstance making romance unlikely or difficult (e.g. time travel, being wanted in several nations, dying, etc). #'The "Seduce the Lion" Rule:' Related to the above; any potential romance that does not fit those outlined demographics/rules will just be a one-time thing, a joke, unrequited, or will simply not happen no matter how well the characters in question get along. #'Delzed's Pride Parade:' Apparently the above rules only apply to the second and third dreams of Arplakoon. Ladies who love ladies apparently will score hugely in fourth dream especially. #'"It Says You're GAY!":' Alright, maybe it's true for fifth and sixth dreams, too. Second dream is just a weirdly heterosexual outlier. #'The +24 Diplomacy Check Rule:' The more you stack mods for a particular ability or skill, the more likely you are to have it fail you when you need it most. Sorry. #'"Who Shot First?" (Isaak's Rule):' If you start the fight,'' you're the bad guy. #'"Let's Split Up, Gang!":' Splitting the group pisses off the DM. You'll be punished in some way for it, be it in accidentally ending up in the traumatic events group, ending up in the "does nothing and finds nothing" group, or simply ending up in a bad situation that could have been avoided if everyone had stuck together. #'The Other Mioura Rule (Bahku, Liddum, and Oscare's Split Group Rule):' Drama is a limited resource. If there's a group split and one group is stumbling on ancient conspiracies, murders, political intrigue, and plot-changing revelations, the other group is going to be playing in the sewers. #'Cameo's Continued Complaint/Ddremmu's Drama Dissertation/Delzed's Depressed Days/Linneav's Long Laments/Njóskkari's Neverending Negativity/Adelle's Abounding Anguish:' Certain characters are just magnets for hell and horrible happenings. Please look forward to it. #'"She Was Going To Be Happy, I Swear!" (Sixth Dream's Rule):' It is probably wise not to assume a character's development will go a certain way. Especially when you know the DM is out for your tears. #'"Now, Where Were We Going Again?" (Player Amnesia Rule):' Every session has to begin with a "Previously on..." type segment, or everyone will have forgotten what happened last week. Anything omitted from this recap paragraph will not be remembered. #'The Other Other Mioura Rule: And yet you can't afford to forget anything or overlook anything, because it'll be relevant later. If you didn't catch how that one NPC stuttered when making mention of another, prepare to be blindsided about how the first NPC has been planning to kill the second this entire time. #Strisci's Grudge:' But the NPCs won't forget anything. Ever. #'Oscare's Sewer Extravaganza:' And sometimes trying to outsmart the DM too much will result in you genuinely not finding anything... because there was absolutely nothing to find by, say, doing the unexpected and going into the sewers. #'Sarah's Rule:' Player and character intuition/guessing abilities are inversely proportional. The player who makes all of the connections the quickest will have a character who would not make those sorts of logic leaps or guesses or will be in a situation where their character doesn't have all the missing pieces (but the player does). #'Kit's Exception:' The one time everyone is on the same page, it was an early game "twist," and there's a much bigger one looming around the corner. #'"Sense Motive Quickly!":' Everyone is suspicious. Everyone. And the one time you forgot to Sense Motive check someone is the one time they were plotting to kill you. #'"Can We Google Translate That?":' The most important information will be behind a language barrier when possible. It'll also probably appear in the chat in untranslated fake language text just to make it even more infuriating that you have no idea what they're saying. #'"Gods Ain't Gonna Help Ya, Son" (Arplakoon's Rule):' An opportunity to ask a knowledgeable third party will result in information that makes no sense until later. I hope you like baseless speculation on the true meaning of what they told you. #'"Wait, Let Me Consult My Encyclopedias!" (Jaspur's Knowledge Check Rule):' Once one person makes a Knowledge check, the session will slow to a crawl because either there'll be a snowball effect where everyone else wants to make a Knowledge check (or the result of the check will result in another check) or the DM will be writing up a lengthy explanation that boils down to "It's magic". #'"You Are Now Prepared" (Cameo the Breadwinner):' Most of the stuff you bought or obtained at the start of the game is still sitting in your inventory, unused and unloved. Don't deny it. #'Ddremmu's Doctrine:' Very few people have pious characters, but the ones who do have them have their religiosity ingrained in their characters in some manner. Consequently, their gods will get an inordinate amount of playtime compared to the others... for better or worse. #'"I'm Gonna Use My Gun" (The Funslinger Rule):' Every single player group will have a shape-shifter character who uses a gun. No exceptions. #'Don's Mioura Fever Rule:' Every single successful player group will have a character who is a colossus or a precursor. #'"Why Did We Give That Dagger To Delzed?":' In a group where more than one person could potentially obtain, hold onto, or use a plot item, the person who wants it the least or for whom it'd be the most trouble to have will end up with it. #'Ganrikkat's Rule:' The most useful or most important plot items will go off-screen or into the hands of NPCs for most of the game. #'Jadern Istrat Hnev's Rule:''' Any conversations about pronunciations will reveal you've been saying it wrong this entire time. Category:Jokes